Journal Archives

handwriting, trouble swallowing) get better without therapy? My small county has no Neurology Clinics or doctors and a backlog of over 6 weeks to see a speech therapist. I had a stroke in my sleep over two months ago; don't have blocked arteries anywhere, don't smoke or drink, am not overweight, don't have diabetes. I hate banging into walls and can only take very short walks (used to walk 1-2 miles every day rain or shine). Fell back in Sept and broke my right elbow (am right-handed); it's healed, but sore at times.

I just want to be me again...depression is setting in. keep trying to remember that old age ain't for sissies. buck up, old girl, things could be worse...

The VA resists a public registry for vets exposed to toxic open-air burn pits.

Rosie Torres sent her 35-year-old husband off to war and watched him return a year later an old man. The handsome Army Reserve captain looked the same on the outside, but he was so brittle on the inside that he was forced out of his full-time job as a Texas state trooper four years after his tour in Iraq.

“Last week we turned in his gun and holster,” Torres told TAC in September. “He’s letting go of his lifelong, childhood dream.”

LeRoy Torres, now 39, is one of a growing number of vets – no one knows yet how many – suffering from unexplained, chronic respiratory and cardiopulmonary illnesses believed to be associated with exposure to the noxious open-air pits that burned trash, hazardous materials, and waste on U.S bases and installations for years.

TAC has followed this issue since October 2009. Today, Rosie heads Burn Pits 360, an advocacy organization for these sick veterans and their families as well as loved ones representing veterans who have died from cancer and other serious ailments post-deployment.

LeRoy Torres was stationed in Iraq at Joint Base Balad, which hosted the biggest pit in the theater, incinerating an estimated 147 tons of waste a day as of 2008. “He described to me the stench, the smell, the smoke, the plume, the residue that it would leave in their quarters — like white ash. He didn’t know why, but something even then told him to stop doing PT
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-new-agent-orange/-------------------

Think about all the Iraqi and Afghan people have had to deal with this "new agent orange." Where is the outrage over what this/our government does under the war on terrorism - to its own people and the people they're at war in? This is another grim disaster that will follow America for decades...

The Daily Telegraph has learnt that at a recent Whitehall meeting on withdrawal, the Chancellor questioned the purpose of continuing Britain’s Afghan mission for another two years.

David Cameron has promised that British combat operations will be over by the end of 2014.

Ministers and military commanders are in discussions over how quickly to reduce troop numbers as the deadline approaches, with Armed Forces chiefs having to draw up new options for a bigger withdrawal next year than was being considered.

No decisions about withdrawals in 2013 are now expected to be made until the new year.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, by name, have been given a pass when it comes to reminding citizens why the economy took a dive that was so deep it couldn't be escaped from in 46 months.

Sure, we hear the POTUS and VPOTIS talk about inheriting a 'mess' but the names of the mess creators are seldom used, It was BUSH/CHENEY who got us into this looong mess and their names should be uttered every time either the President or Vice-President says R&R's names.

R&R have the same policies, even more severe, than Bush/Cheney - Americans need to remember this: Unpaid for (maybe even illegal) wars, tax cuts for millionaires & billionaires, disregard for survival of the Planet, okaying use of torture, non-competitive contracts, lost 600,000 private sector jobs in 8 years, in first 4 years grew Federal government jobs by 3,7%, began with a budget surplus and $5.8 trillion gross federal debt, which grew by $6.1 trillion to reach $11.9 trillion - an increase of 105 percent. If Americans want more of this, R&R are just the men to give it to you, and will be a redo of Bush/Cheney. These four names are linked, set in concrete, one in the same...

As expected, the deficit and debt were both discussed in the first presidential debate on domestic policy. However, despite this year’s endless American summer and a devastating drought that won’t leave town, climate change wasn’t. What would you bet that it won’t be a significant topic in the final debate on foreign policy either? Only one conclusion seems reasonable: climate change has no place on this American planet.

So far, both presidential campaigns indicate as much. To a wave of laughter in the final moments of his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, Mitt Romney mocked the subject, linking it negatively to the president. (“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise... is to help you and your family.”) Obama simply avoided the subject in his. And that pretty much sums up the situation to date.

Though opinion polls indicate that undecided voters want to hear the candidates’ thoughts on climate change, I’m hardly the first person to note that the subject has gone MIA in the campaign season. Noam Chomsky, the Nation magazine, Salon’s Andrew Leonard, and Joe Romm of Climate Progress, among others, have all commented strikingly on its disappearance. But here’s the curious thing: if American debt and deficit happen to be your worry, then climate change should be your subject.

In response to a question about the deficit in the first debate, Romney typically said, “I think it's, frankly, not moral for my generation to keep spending massively more than we take in, knowing those burdens are going to be passed on to the next generation and they're going to be paying the interest and the principal all their lives.” Not a bad point really. Who wants to pile an unbearable burden of debt on future generations who won’t be able to work their way out from under it?

foreign affairs subjects - specifically Afghanistan. About threw up when I heard this. Robert Dryfuss from The Nation says it much better than I ever could:
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Listen to Biden:

e are leaving. We are leaving in 2014. Period. And in the process, we’re going to be saving over the next 10 years another $800 billion. We’ve been in this war for over a decade. The primary objective is almost completed. Now, all we’re doing is putting the Kabul government in a position to be able to maintain their own security. It’s their responsibility, not America’s.

snip

Ryan, on the other hand, was all over the place. He said he’ll listen to the generals and give them what they want, he said he’s “skeptical” about talking with the Taliban (Romney, of course, is flatly against negotiations with the Taliban), and he seemed to support the idea of making the withdrawal of US and NATO forces contingent on “conditions” on the ground. He said:

What we don’t want to do is lose the gains we’ve gotten. Now, we’ve disagreed from time to time on a few issues. We would have more likely taken into accounts the recommendations from our commanders, General Petraeus, Admiral Mullen, on troop levels throughout this year’s fighting season. We’ve been skeptical about negotiations with the Taliban, especially while they’re shooting at us.

But we want to see the 2014 transition be successful, and that means we want to make sure our commanders have what they need to make sure that it is successful so that this does not once again become a launching pad for terrorists.

snip

And then there was this odd exchange with the moderator, Martha Raddatz of ABC News:

RADDATZ: Mr. Ryan, I want to ask you about—the Romney campaign talks a lot about no apologies. He has a book called “No Apologies.” Should the US have apologized for Americans burning Korans in Afghanistan? Should the US apologize for US Marines urinating on Taliban corpses?

RYAN: Oh, gosh, yes. Urinating on Taliban corpses? What we should not apologize for…

RADDATZ: Burning Korans, immediately?

RYAN: What—what we should not be apologizing for are standing up for our values.

So Ryan is willing apologize for things like US forces urinating on Afghan corpses—though he finessed the Koran question, no doubt to pander to his Islamophobic, Christian-right base. But who, exactly, is apologizing for “standing up for our values”? Did Obama say: “World, I’m so sorry that we stand for truth, justice and the American way”? Umm, no. Sadly, Raddatz didn’t press Ryan on that.

A new analysis released today by national and regional environmental groups shows that US oil giant Exxon Mobile and Canada's Suncor hold a majority stake in a pipeline system that local residents along its route fear could soon be used to transport tar sands from western Canada to the New England coast.

The central concern of the report (pdf) surrounds a 2008 proposal by Canadian oil giant Enbridge to reverse the flow of existing east-to-west oil pipelines that would allow transport of tar sands oil—categorized by many as the "dirtiest oil in the world"—from Alberta to the coast of Maine.

The local companies who manage the pipelines companies insist the idea has been shelved for economic reasons, but multiple recent actions lead the environmental groups to believe that the proposal is now being quietly revived behind closed doors. Pointedly, the groups argue that the oil giants who own these local pipeline subsidiaries should not be trusted.

"Unbeknownst to most of the public," said the groups in a statement, "a major portion of the proposed tar sands pipeline that would cut across the Great Lakes, Ontario, Quebec and New England to Portland, Maine, is actually owned by oil giants Exxon-Mobil, Imperial Oil, and Suncor Energy – all of whom have a deep stake in tar sands extraction."

Although this "spoof story" ran a couple of months ago, it sure has some truth in it.
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This is the most unheard of thing I’ve ever heard of,’ says his doctor.

Salt Lake City, Utah | The shocking results of GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s physical had the medical staff of the Brigham Young Faith-Based Medical Center at a loss to explain what they found.

What they found: Incontrovertible proof that Mitt Romney actually does possess one sincere bone in his body.

“We have checked and rechecked our tests and can now announce the results with certainty,” said Chief Internist Orem Cluff, surrounded by his staff of specialists.

Romney’s doctors released this image showing x-rays of the candidate’s entire body, highlighting the location of the single sincere bone in his body.

“Contrary to Mr. Romney’s long-held belief, we have discovered that Mr. Romney does indeed have one sincere bone in his body. We know this will come as a shock to the many Republicans who loathe him, to the public who doesn’t believe a word he says, and to the Democrats, all whom believed — with good reason — that Mr. Romney didn’t have a sincere bone in his body.

“But after x-raying his entire body, we found that one of the metatarsals in his left foot — which is the one that he prefers to put in his mouth — is quite engagingly sincere.

Americans lived in a “victory culture” for much of the twentieth century. You could say that we experienced an almost 75-year stretch of triumphalism -- think of it as the real “American Century” -- from World War I to the end of the Cold War, with time off for a destructive stalemate in Korea and a defeat in Vietnam too shocking to absorb or shake off.

When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, it all seemed so obvious. Fate had clearly dealt Washington a royal flush. It was victory with a capital V. The United States was, after all, the last standing superpower, after centuries of unceasing great power rivalries on the planet. It had a military beyond compare and no enemy, hardly a “rogue state,” on the horizon. It was almost unnerving, such clear sailing into a dominant future, but a moment for the ages nonetheless. Within a decade, pundits in Washington were hailing us as “the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.”

And here’s the odd thing: in a sense, little has changed since then and yet everything seems different. Think of it as the American imperial paradox: everywhere there are now “threats” against our well-being which seem to demand action and yet nowhere are there commensurate enemies to go with them. Everywhere the U.S. military still reigns supreme by almost any measure you might care to apply; and yet -- in case the paradox has escaped you -- nowhere can it achieve its goals, however modest.

At one level, the American situation should simply take your breath away. Never before in modern history had there been an arms race of only one or a great power confrontation of only one. And at least in military terms, just as the neoconservatives imagined in those early years of the twenty-first century, the United States remains the “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower” of planet Earth.

In his book, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," Mitt Romney laid his cards on the table: "I'm one of those who believe America is destined to remain as it has been since the birth of the Republic - the brightest hope of the world."

Obama's reluctance to acknowledge America's manifest moral and economic superiority is for Romney a telltale of his essential foreignness. "American prosperity is fully dependent upon having an opportunity society - I don't think President Obama understands that," he told the Republican Jewish Coalition last Pearl Harbor Day. "I don't think he understands why our economy is the most successful in the world. I don't think he understands America."

snip

Where the US does excel is in the production of billionaires: It has almost double the level of billionaires per million inhabitants than Canada and Germany, its closest competitors. Not coincidentally, the US also has the lowest level of tax collection.

In the last chapter of his book, Friedman invites his readers to participate in a thought experiment:

Imagine if we were to announce tomorrow that we are going to establish one of the wealthiest countries in the world. This country would offer a few special features: The rich can get richer than in other countries, but the poor will be comparatively poorer and will have less chance of breaking free of poverty. Those who can afford health care can purchase it, and the rest must rely on emergency care only. Education will be slanted heavily to favor the rich, while the jails will be filled with people mostly from lower-income families.